184 
ARARAT. 
greater head runs almost perpendicularly down to the north-east, 
while the lesser head rises from the sloping bosom of the cleft, 
in a perfectly conical shape. Both heads are covered with snow. 
The form of the greater is similar to the less, only broader and 
rounder at the top ; and shows, to the north-west, a broken and 
abrupt front; opening, about half-way down, into a stupendous 
chasm, deep, rocky, and peculiarly black. At that part of the 
mountain, the hollow of the chasm receives an interruption from 
the projections of minor mountains, which start from the sides 
of Ararat, like branches from the root of a tree, and run along 
in undulating progression, till lost in the distant vapours of the 
plain. 
The dark chasm which I have mentioned as being in the side 
of the great head of the mountain, is supposed, by some 
travellers, to have been the exhausted crater of Ararat. Dr. 
Reniggs even affirms it, by stating, that, in the year 1783, 
during certain days in the month of January and February, an 
eruption took place in that mountain ; and he suggests the pro¬ 
bability of the burning ashes, ejected thence at that time, reaching 
to the southern side of the Caucasus, (a distance, in a direct line, 
of two hundred and twenty wersts ;) and so depositing the 
volcanic productions which are found there. The reason he 
gives for this latter supposition is, that the trapp seen there did 
not originate in those mountains, and must, consequently, have 
been sent thither by volcanic explosions elsewhere. And that 
this elsewhere, which he concludes to be Ararat, may have been 
that mountain, I do not pretend to dispute; but those events 
must have taken place many centuries ago, even before history 
took note of the spot ; for, since that period, we have no 
intimation whatever, of any part of Ararat having been seen in 
